


lighthouses at your bedside

by thescrewtapedemos



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M, Pining, emotional illiteracy by the bucket, universe-hopping in one's sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-04 20:36:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18820243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thescrewtapedemos/pseuds/thescrewtapedemos
Summary: Josty visits other realities in his sleep. This should not, strictly speaking, concern Alex at all.





	lighthouses at your bedside

**Author's Note:**

> this is, at time of posting, my 69th fic. just some fun facts. 
> 
> thank you to moliver and greymichaela for beta! 
> 
> enjoy xoxo

“Sometimes I go away,” Josty says. “When I’m asleep.” 

“Oh,” Alex says and digests that for a moment. Josty isn’t looking at him. He’s staring out the window. He’s all lit up with the last of the autumn sunshine, round-cheeked and soft with preseason. “Where do you go?” 

Josty looks at him, a little flicker of a glance. His eyes are big and solemn. 

“Other places,” he says. “Someplace, y’know. Else.”

-/-

There’s a few things Alex knows about Josty:

  1. Josty’s smile has the power to take Alex out. Right at the knees. Like a bullet to the back of the head. Taken out like a pretty girl on prom night.
  2. Josty wakes up screaming every once in a while.
  3. Josty is colorblind and refuses to let this stop him wearing whatever the hell he feels like putting in his closet. He looks unfairly good anyway. This may be an effect of the first point.
  4. Josty goes away in his sleep sometimes.
  5. Wherever it is Josty goes when he sleeps, they’re not very nice places.



-/-

“They’re not dreams, right?” Alex asks carefully. Josty’s hunched over a steaming mug of coffee. There are circles under his eyes but he smiles cheerfully anyway.

“I think I’d know the difference,” he says. Alex isn’t so sure but JT stumbles into the kitchen, both eyes closed and hand extended for the mug Alex hands him, and he lets it go.

-/-

Alex isn’t quite sure he isn’t dreaming, disoriented in the dim light of the streetlight through the window. Josty’s silhouette is big in the dark, baggy sleep shirt hanging off a white shoulder, an indistinct halo of curls and the flash of teeth. There’s the weight on Alex’s ankle that might be a hand and might be what woke him up, if he’s awake.

“Hmm,” Alex mumbles. Josty makes a little sighing noise. 

“Can I sleep here?” he asks and his voice doesn’t make anything clearer. It’s thin and dreamlike and Alex closes his eyes when Josty slips into bed with him. The realest thing is the warm hand Josty slides into his just as he’s slipping back into the dream. 

When he wakes up Josty isn’t there but the bed is still warm where he’d left a hollow little impression in the sheets.

-/-

“You sleeping alright, Kerf?” Gabe asks, spraying Alex and JT with snow on the pass as he pulls up beside them. Alex spits and flails, applies a sharp elbow Gabe barely winces at. JT just snorts at him. “You look like shit. Worse than shit. You look like Tyson.”

“I’m sleeping _fine_ ,” he snaps, all mock-irritation. “Go captain someone else.” 

“Mm _hmm_ ,” Gabe says, but Barrie’s starting a shoving match with Nate on the other end of the rink and Gabe has to leave to stop them from choking each other out on the ice again. JT nudges him, dodges the elbow Alex tosses his way easily and crowds up against him a little more. He’s warm even through the pads. 

“You do look kinda tired,” he says carefully. 

“M’fine,” Alex says shortly. Because really, he’s fine.

-/-

Josty’s screaming is what wakes him up. It’s muffled by the wall and the door between them, and he barely catches the tail end of it. He lays awake in the dark for a long, long minute, until he hears Josty’s door click open.

He hesitates in the hall for a long time, between Alex’s and JT’s doors. Eventually there’s a click, the door that isn’t Alex’s opening and then closing, and then nothing else at all. 

Alex turns over and pulls his blankets over his shoulder and closes his eyes. There’s practice tomorrow.

-/-

“What do you dream about?” he asks Barrie idly. They’re seated together because Nate is out on IR _again_ and Gabe is being more of a loser than usual and Barrie’s put him in time-out because of it, and Josty’s sleeping on JT’s shoulder. Alex is antsy. They’re earlier than usual for middle of the night flights, which means 2AM instead of 4.

Barrie raises an eyebrow at him. He looks a little like Josty for a second, curls falling on his forehead and dark circles under his eyes. Bunny teeth under a sweet, mean little smile. Tysons being Tysons. 

“You’re fucking weird, kid,” he says. 

“Free rein to talk about yourself and you choose to insult me instead,” Alex says. “You decide to grow as a person this season or what all?” 

Barrie squawks and punches him in the shoulder and it’s all fine.

-/-

“So where do you go?” Alex asks. They’re crammed together in the booth and it’s so dark except the flash of intermittent neon, and with that and the music pounding overhead it’s almost like they’re alone even though Gravy’s coltish elbows are jabbing him in the kidney and Colin’s got Josty pinned in place like a soft, patchouli-scented wall on the other side.

Josty shrugs, shoulder pressed against Alex’s. He’s drunk, kind of. Alex has seen him drunker. 

“Places,” he says. “Lots of places. Ways things could have been, if. You know.” 

Alex doesn’t know but he toasts it with his beer anyway. Josty smiles at him and toasts right back, the glass on glass traveling up Alex’s arm more than reaching his ear. 

“You’re always there, you and JT,” Josty says and chugs the rest of his beer in one long series of swallows.

-/-

He’s not sure if Josty’s told JT about the thing, the thing where he goes other places when he sleeps. He does know that sometimes Josty comes to his bed and sometimes he goes to JT’s and sometimes he doesn’t do either. If there’s a rhyme or reason to it, it’s not apparent to Alex.

Josty slides under the covers and he’s shivering. Alex sleeps pretty heavily most of the time but Josty wakes him up every time. 

Alex tucks him under his arm, sleep-dizzy. 

“S’a lot of fire,” Josty whispers into Alex’s shoulder and lets Alex tuck him under his chin. 

“You’re okay,” Alex slurs. He’s not sure it makes any sense, he’s still halfway asleep, but Josty burrows closer anyway. He’s still shaking, and he clutches onto Alex’s shirt.

-/-

Here’s what Alex knows about JT:

  1. He’s warm in every sense of the word and he tries to hide it, but Alex knows.
  2. Sometimes Josty climbs into his bed, when he isn’t climbing into Alex’s and he isn’t staying in his own.
  3. When he talks about his sister his eyes go bright and sharp and brilliantly proud and it makes something very like but distinct from jealousy go squirmy in Alex’s gut.
  4. Once Alex had kissed JT, one time when they’d been very drunk and it had been training camp and they’d both been shit-scared and needed- something.
  5. They hadn’t ever really talked about it.



-/-

Josty comes to practice favoring his left side like Alex remembers from when his Harvard winger had broken a rib and tried to hide it like a fucking moron. Wincing, moving slow to turn. He corners Josty before he’s even all the way into his pads and strips his shirt off him without paying any attention to the way Josty protests. JT watches with a frown and doesn’t move to help either of them.

There’s no bruises anywhere. No swelling. Just the flaring wing of Josty’s ribcage and pasty skin.

“Fuck off,” Josty says, but he sounds more defeated than upset. Alex lets him go. 

“You’re acting like you broke something,” he explains, kind of. Josty shrugs. 

“I went away,” he says, hand going to his ribs like he doesn’t even know he’s doing it. His eyes are far away. Wherever he’s looking, it isn’t in this room. 

So, JT does know. Alex looks at him and he shrugs. 

“Don’t let the trainers see you doing that,” he says, when Alex can’t find something to say. Josty nods and smiles at them absently.

-/-

They’re winning more than they’re losing, but not enough to make anyone comfortable or happy. Barrie’s got circles under his eyes and the way he snaps at Nate is more bite than anyone’s used to. Gabe is quiet for once. EJ and Sammy have claimed the back two rows for only them and not even Josty has the energy to needle them about it, their strange little defenceman thing.

Josty settles into the seat next to Alex. JT’s across the aisle, both headphones in, elbow-deep in some phone game that’s lighting his face up in pastel shades of pink and green. 

“I don’t go away when I sleep with you,” he says frankly, easily like Alex already knew that and Josty’s just reminding him. 

“Kay,” Alex says. Josty falls asleep the moment they hit cruising altitude and Alex watches the lights of towns slide by beneath them and tries not to move his shoulder too much. Josty needs his sleep.

-/-

Josty stays in his own bed for nearly two weeks and it’s the first time Alex has really thought about how often he’s been in Alex’s bed. Alex’s or JT’s; more often than his own, maybe.

It’d worry him, except they’re on a skid that’s grinding everyone down worse than ever and it’s hard for him to think about anything other than forcing sore legs from the rink to the car to his bed and back again. Josty’s skating like he always does. It’s got to be enough. 

Except it’s not, because Josty gets sent down, and there’s no one sleeping in the bedroom at the end of the hall anymore. It takes Alex out, takes him right the fuck out like a bullet to the back of the head. 

He’d forgotten what it’s like to be scared like this. Scared back behind his sternum, unrelenting small fear that he can ignore mostly except when he can’t. He stands in the hallway where Josty must have, in the middle of the night, and looks back and forth between JT’s door and his own.

-/-

Josty comes back smiling like he always does, like he’s setting out to break a heart on purpose. There’s dark smudges under his eyes. He isn’t favoring anything, which Alex is aware doesn’t mean too much, because he doesn’t carry back whatever happens to him when he goes away.

“How’d you sleep?” JT asks, careful as always, and Alex is kind of grateful because he hadn’t known how to ask at all. 

Josty smiles some more, throws his arms around their shoulders and hangs his weight off them so they have to get their arms under his or let him topple right to the floor. 

“Coulda been better,” he says, carefree. “Missed you guys.” 

“Missed you too, asshole,” Alex says and they dump Josty on the floor like they’d discussed it beforehand, grinning at each other over Josty’s whining and flailing around on the floor. It’s a lot of relief, Alex is pretty sure. It is for him at least.

-/-

“Don’t get sent down again,” Sammy says with authority, like any of them have any say in the matter, but Josty salutes anyway. EJ’s lounging on thin air at Sammy’s shoulder, eyes sharp and thoughtful on all of them, but he doesn’t say anything.

“You got it, chief,” Josty says. 

“We’ll make sure of it,” Alex promises because he’s a fool and an idiot. EJ grins at him toothlessly. He looks very knowing.

-/-

Josty screams himself awake again and Alex isn’t necessarily very happy with himself for how relieved he feels, waking up to the noise.

He tracks the pad of Josty’s footsteps to the intersection between JT’s door and his own. He keeps his eyes closed, holds his breath and counts the seconds and waits until the door that isn’t his own clicks open and he exhales. Turns over and pulls his blanket up. 

He’s almost asleep when his door clicks open. 

“Move over,” JT says, and Alex slides over to the edge of the bed. Josty slips in next to him and then JT crowds in, instantly almost too hot under the blankets. Alex blinks blearily into the darkness and he might still be asleep, maybe. 

Josty’s shaking. A fine, desperate tremble. His breathing is wet against Alex’s shoulder. 

“Tyson,” Alex whispers. His voice is croaky with sleep. A hand so warm it burns wraps itself in his shirt. 

Josty’s cheeks are wet when he presses his face into Alex’s chest. 

JT’s close behind, a hand on Alex’s hip and the warm weight of him radiating through both of them. Alex can’t quite make out his face in the darkness, and doesn’t have to. He knows JT’s watching him. 

“G’night,” he says, eventually. 

“Goodnight,” JT says, and Alex closes his eyes.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Lighthouses At Your Bedside](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19166131) by [Annapods](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annapods/pseuds/Annapods)




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